Clark Whelton forwarded the link at www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-08-17-clocks-tree-rings-could-reset-chronologies-… … Oxford University researchers say that trees that grew during intense radiation events in the past have left behind an imprint in their rings that can be teased out and used to define the chronologies of the Bronze Ages and earlier. It seems that ice cores preserve changes in Beryillium and tree rings can now be more closely integrated by the now recognised signature of what is assumed to be solar radiation caused by big CME events. It will be able to integrate ice cores more closely with tree rings – although this is already done by narrow growth tree rings which are matched with volcanic signatures in ice cores. It will be interesting how this pans out as not all volcanoes leave an acid signal in ice cores. It is also far from clear that narrow growth tree ring events are entirely volcanic in nature. All we know is that they coincide with drops in global temperature – but that could equally be caused by other natural events and not solely by volcanoes. Therefore, the new discovery is something to be welcomed by catastrophists as it may open a can of worms for mainstream.
The link says the current calibration of C14 with tree rings is only reliable up until around 800BC (which is where the calibration curve shoots off from the raw data, the curve beginning around 500BC). This is of course where Velikovsky located some of his cosmic event, in the 8th century. There is also a tree ring 'event' around 900BC (or shortly thereafter) which may have produced a plateau event (an injection of C14 into the atmosphere). It will be interesting to see what is currently causing the blockage in the calibration curve at this point – will they find evidence of an injection of solar radiation for example. It is possible the calibration curve has been modified in recent years as a lot of re-dating has been going on (dates being pushed back further and further) so that will be something else to look out for. For the moment the researchers appear to be more interested in the 775 and 994AD spikes in radio carbon. If the source of those spikes was solar flares and then they would have had to be extraordinarily powerful, much more intense than the 19th century Carrington Event. If a CME was involved it would create a certain amount of anxiety amongst scientists as we have so much technology orbiting around in near space. They could be frizzled in situ by such a solar flare.
The same story is at http://phys.org/print390580415.html and at http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/472/2192/20160263/ and comes with pictures at the Daily Mail web site www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3744774/The-secret-clocks-inside… … but the comments seem somewhat confused as they believe C14 dating is more reliable than it really is.
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